Safety in a Failing Economy

[SoNotHer]

There's a great book entitled, Everything I Want to Do is Illegal. The HOAs have, in their infinite wisdom, made everything from hanging up clothes on a line to growing vegetables in your front yard a crime. This must and will change.

I appreciate you've got limited choices, Drew. I've had no car and taken two hour and half bus rides to work. I've slept on an old mattress on a floor with one sheet. I've gotten down to two cans of food in the cupboard, and I've had no place to live.

Obviously, when I was bouncing between a friend's couch and a vacant house and a friend's basement, I wasn't thinking about living off the grid or participating in a CSA. But the moment I had a rental contract and a place to stay, I was planting.

These times reinforced for me the idea of frugality and the value of "repurposing" of things. But I first learned to save and reuse from my mother who survived the Great Depression at least in part because she and the aunts she lived with were eating from their garden.

Originally Posted by atomiczombie

I honestly don't know. I think there are so many things that need to happen to lift up the people in poverty in the US. A lot of those things are being addressed by the Occupy movement right now. I think it would be great if we all had some option to "live off the grid" so to speak. I am not the best at being able to answer your question because I happen to be someone with very little money myself.

I live with my folks and I am on disability. They live in a planned community where the home owners association tells you what you can and can't do with your tiny front and back yards. Anything you do to your home, including what color you paint it, is dictated by the HOA here. And my folks are retired and don't have the physical ability to plant anything. They pay people to mow their lawn every week. I have agoraphobia so going out of the house isn't exactly easy for me. I don't mind trying to fix things or putting them together as long as I am in the house.

I think all the ideas put forth in this thread are great. I just don't know how people without much in the way of resources (such as moi) would be able to put them into practice. Does that somehow offend you dykeumentary?